Joe's Big Toe

While I was at Tram­lines, some­thing happened which made me think long and hard about the role of secur­ity at an event. What are they really there for? I came up with a few the­or­ies. The first idea I mulled over was that they’re just there to be bas­tards to us all, and to make the gig a little bit worse for every­one going. I think a lot of people would agree with me on that one. There’s a legal oblig­a­tion to provide secur­ity at events, so their jobs are …

Those of you who know me will be well aware that I don’t like to moan (actu­ally that’s not true – I love it) but I’d like to share with you a par­tic­u­lar gripe that’s been the thorn in my side since I first encountered the Birm­ing­ham music scene many a year ago, and dis­covered a form of music so grot­esque, so vile and chee­sey in its unashamed copy­ing of proper enter­tain­ment that I imme­di­ately expec­ted the people respons­ible to be run out of town by pitchfork-wielding yokels. I am …

I’m sure you will have been fol­low­ing, as I have, the events fol­low­ing the death of pop’s greatest icon, Michael Jack­son and the sub­sequent trial of his car­di­olo­gist for mis­con­duct in allow­ing the singer to ingest a lethal amount of pain-killers as a sleep­ing aid. If con­victed of invol­un­tary man­slaughter Dr Con­rad Mur­ray could face 4 years in jail in addi­tion to the loss of his med­ical license. All of which is, as they say, fair enough. If Mur­ray did indeed admin­is­ter the lethal dose then he should be punished …

Have you ever been listen­ing to the radio in the car and had that feel­ing of sheer exultance when a song you love, but haven’t heard for ages, comes on? You grin like a per­form­ing chimp and after a quick check to make sure that no one in any of the adja­cent cars can see you, you gear your­self up to belt out that first line. Except it turns out that it’s not the song you though it was, and in a per­fect imit­a­tion of that clas­sic Steven Tyler/Run DMC …

For the past ten to fif­teen years, the music industry has been involved in a battle. And it’s been los­ing. Bit­Tor­rent is the music industry’s Viet­nam. There are just too many people who have become accus­tomed to hav­ing the music they want, when they want, for the price they want (which is noth­ing). The music industry can’t force people to pay for music any more. There have been some ser­i­ous efforts to sug­gest new busi­ness mod­els for the industry, but they’ve been deceiv­ing them­selves. And Spo­tify is show­ing us that …

At Joe’sBigToe.co.uk we deal with music. We deal with beats and rhythms, melod­ies and har­mon­ies, bass and treble. And that’s a great start. We give you our sug­ges­tions, recom­mend­a­tions, and thoughts on what you should listen to and why. But in the past, we’ve gone as far as sug­gest­ing where to get your music from (see the edit­or­ial on eMusic). In the future, we might try and tell you when to listen to music, but now, I want to talk to you about how you listen to music. Nowadays, most …

You may be sur­prised to hear that I haven’t down­loaded a single song illeg­ally for two months. But it’s true. I’ve dis­covered a web­site, eMusic.com, which feeds all of my music needs. It’s rel­at­ively expens­ive, yes, but it’s well designed, and it’s cheaper than iTunes or any other legal down­load ser­vice I’ve dis­covered. Also, one of the huge pluses is that it doesn’t use DRM. That means that when I down­load a track, it’s mine to keep forever. eMusic also allow me down­load it as many times as I like, …